The present invention relates generally to the field of data management, and more particularly to integrated portals.
An enterprise portal, also known as an enterprise information portal (EIP), is a framework for integrating information, people, and processes across organizational boundaries. Enterprise portals provide a secure unified access point, often in the form of a web-based user interface, and are designed to aggregate and personalize information through application-specific portlets.
It is known to provide for customization for a portal user. That is, users can customize the look and feel of their environment. Customers who are using EIPs can edit and design their own web sites, which are full of their own personality or style. Further, the customer can choose the specific content and services they prefer. EIPs provide for the ability to prioritize most appropriate content based on attributes of the user and metadata of the available content. It is also known to provide for personalization for a portal user. Personalization is more about matching content with the user. Based on a user profile, personalization uses rules to match the “services”, or content, to the specific user. To distinguish these two portal features, customization is in hands of the end user, while personalization is not. Of course, actual personalization is often based on the user's role or job function within the portal context.
Portal software is a type of development tool used to create a portal (starting point) on a company's intranet so that employees can find a centralized starting place for access to consolidated enterprise-related functions, such as e-mail, customer relationship management (CRM) tools, company information, workgroup systems, and other applications.
Software products and applications are being developed with more and more features and with increasing complexities. Development teams also spend a lot of time to get the product exactly right the first time. There is a lot of research done to try and get the correct requirements before designing.